


i forgot my own world

by bonjourmags



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - College/University, Barman AU, Friends to Lovers, Mentions of alcohol, student folklore, this is not underage!!! they're 18 and in UK
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-10
Updated: 2017-12-10
Packaged: 2019-02-13 05:13:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12976764
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bonjourmags/pseuds/bonjourmags
Summary: Everyone says your college years are the best, but Will never has time to party, since he also works as a barman to be able to study in the UK.One day, he meets a boy, Mike, with a weird baseball cap, who never stops partying.





	i forgot my own world

**Author's Note:**

> Hi guys!! So here I am with another story! The cap I'm talking about is a Penne, you should check "penne calotte" on google, because it's quite difficult to explain.

College, it was. 

 

Everyone told him that college will be the best years of his life. He trusted them. Will Byers used to trust people, most of the time, he liked to think that humanity was still a thing and that you don't gain anything from lying. Some of them weren't. His uncle, who worked as a doctor in a big community house told him he had a lot of fun. So did the girl working with his friend's dad, and the lady who fixed his computer, the list was long. 

 

Something that they didn't told him was the amount of work he had to give. It was so much more than he had to do before, and he used to be in the smart kids who loved working. At least, now he could work on what he wanted: art. He got a scholar ship and even a place in his first choice, which was Royal college of Arts. With the help of a small work on Friday and Saturday nights, in a bar downtown, he could pay for his rent - which was a good amount, but not that much, since his mom found a very kind lady and her husband, who proposed that he'd live with them, in the room that used to be their daughter's. They shared all of the others places, but it didn't matter. Will loved to be included in a new family, in the Ed's family.

 

He liked his job, it wasn't so arch. Of course, he had to learn how to do cocktails - which was not something he knew before. He never drank that much, except wine when his mom was giving him a bit for occasions such as Christmas or New Year's Eve. Speaking of her, he missed her a lot. She and his brother, Jonathan, were still away in the US while he moved in the UK. At some point, he wondered if it wasn't a bad idea to leave them, but when his mom told him that it wasn't everyday that you can get into the second best art's school of the world with a scholarship. He said okay, and never said his other arguments since she had won the talk. 

 

Of course, people said that the years that you spend in college were the best ones - Will figured out why. It's because they party whenever they can. He heard that in other countries it was even more, and couldn't believe his eyes since he was there when the students were partying - and he was the one serving them alcohol. 

 

It seemed weird for him to give cocktails or beer to young people, or at least people under twenty-one, since in America the law on alcohol was very different. In the UK, it seemed that anyone above eighteen could get whatever whenever. 

 

With work for the bar, work for his school, Will had little time to make friends. He didn't care, he liked reading and was trying to make his own webcomic when he could. He wasn't so alone. He would skype with his brother and mother, and sometimes Jane, the sheriff's daughter who was studying in San Fransisco. He even made a friend here, well, he thought she was a friend since she was sometimes a bit sassy in a "I'm-mean-but-not-too-much" way, but in the end Will know she liked him and they were getting along, eating their meals together. Her name was Max, and she was studying in the same college as him, but in fashion. 

 

But that was it. Will's life was as long as a sentence. Wake up, go to college, eat with Max, continue on working for his projects, talking with the Ed's, go to work in the bar, go to sleep, repeat. It didn't matter: Will was a man of simple needs. 

 

This didn't mean that he couldn't go for an extra pleasure. He had his little (secret) time of the week, where the guy would show up at the bar. 

 

Will looked at people - a lot. He thinks that everyone's face is different and that everyone deserves to be sketched. He tries to remember how curls the nose of that redhead girl, how this man's hand falls on his leg as he takes the bus, how this young boy was bitting his lip when he was wondering if he wanted a chocolate or vanilla ice cream. He saw all of them, and it felt like they all were alive for him to find inspiration to create cartoons and webcomics. He got really good at staring at people, and now could do it without anyone noticing, almost as if he was invisible. In a way, he was. He's the barman - the guy you never remember what clothes he was wearing, or even his name that you could read on his badge.

 

But there was this guy. He used to call him curled-hair boy, as he had some curls (not so many, but they were here and it was even nicer that it wasn't a full curled head, he thought). The first time he showed up, Will locked his mind on him directly. He was very tall, with some other friends. He had some kind of baseball cap above his head, something that Will had never seen in his life. He and the three other people (two boys, and a girl with long blond hair) he was with sat directly on the bar, and he looked with interest the menu of drinks, then turned it to seek beers, guessed Will. 

 

"We'll take three mojitos." Said the boy that was seating just next to curled-hair boy. "Mike, what are you taking?" He asked, then marked a pause before adding: "You're searching your weird beers, again?" And it seemed to be funny, since the two other people laughed with him. The curled-hair boy, Mike, hushed them. "You don't know how good is the red kasteel, guys. There's no good beer, so I guess I'll take another mojito." He said as he turned to Will with a smile. Just before he turned around to prepare the drinks, he asked their ID cards to be sure they were older than eighteen, which they were. 

 

He had enough of people ordering mojitos - it was like the frappucino of alcohol. Of course, he did them very fast as he was used to, and they tasted really good, so he understood that some of the usual clients of the bar ordered that to him. He even got the nickname "Mojito boss" from Stephen, a 50 year old folk that came every Saturday with his friends. He did the four mojitos, then handed them to his clients. He smiled, as he was asked, but with the boy - Mike, it wasn't hard to. 

 

He had his baseball cap on the table, now, and Will looked at it as he gave the mojitos. It was white, with a large front who was black, with a lot of stickers. On the back of it, on the white part, there was golden letters saying "HOMO-SAPIEN" with other golden things, such as a mix of instruments. Will was absorbed by this and when he gave the last mojito, he was more concentrated on the hat than the drink: his hand dropped the glass too quick, and it fell on the boy's hat.

 

That is awkward, he thought. 

 

"Oh shit!" He said, and Mike looked at him with a small laugh. Will immediately tried to cover his mistake, but the boy stopped him by posing his hand over his. "That's fine. This penne got way more than a mojito. It doesn't matter." Will looked at him with giant eyes. He turned around, then make another mojito, and gave it as quickly as he could, which was very fast. The boy smiled. "Thanks." 

 

The four of them talked, and Will forgot about them (or, at least, three of the four), as he continued his work. They stayed a long time, and they even went in the part of the bar that had place to dance, and Will was slowly staring that this Mike guy. He liked him, he could feel it. He knew they were opposites - the other looked so confident, he was so tall, his face was sure, his words were organized, his entire soul screamed that he was perfect. That's what Will thought. 

 

They took so many drinks - they stopped getting cocktails after midnight, since it was pretty much expensive, and they only took beers. "What's like, the least expensive thing that could get me really wrecked, hmm," said the girl as she looked at Will with a smirk, trying to figure out his name, "Adam. You look like someone who could be called Adam." Will laughed and showed his name tag. "I'm Will, but you can call me Adam if it pleases. I'm a man of many names." He answered, then he heard Mike, "Oh yeah?" and Will didn't understand why he said that, but he was happy that he said it. Maybe Mike had more alcohol in his blood, but Will was clearly more drunk in his mind than him, because of him.

 

"Here, that's something fairly cheap, and it always gets me fucked up when I drink that." He pointed a cocktail, but it wasn't expensive. They all asked one, and Will did them with precision. He liked having young costumers, and they all looked like they were his age. He served them, and as he did the entire evening, he watched out for Mike's... poune? penne? He watched for it, anyway. "What's this?" he asked, when Mike wasn't speaking with the others. Mike looked at him and had the biggest smile he ever saw. He seemed happy that someone was asking about his cap. 

 

"That's my penne! Isn't it cute?" He said, but that didn't help Will. "It's a cap that you get when you do you your baptism. Like, not a religious one, your student baptism. I had to study in Belgium for a year because of my dad's work and I got baptized in polytechnics." Will looked at him with questioning eyes. "What do you do to get baptized?" He wondered. "That's -um. Some people say it should be secret, but hey, I don't care," he was clearly drunk, but Will loved seing drunk people. It showed their real spirits. "I had to drink tons of beer, party but like, not so fun partying, more like bringing drinks, and then we had this thing where we did a rock war but the rocks were animals organs," he stopped, "this sounds weird, but I swear it's fun. And you learn how to really party, and you meet lots of people, and you sing. All the time." 

 

He took his penne in his hands, happy to talk to someone about it. "I decided to do that since I was a foreigner it was easier to get to know people. And I learned some french thanks to that." He showed him a part of his penne, "that's the sign of polytechnics, this is a sticker my friend made, this one is the sticker of my university, and that's my nickname." He turned it around, showing the "HOMO-SAPIEN" with a giant smile. "We all get one. It means homo-sapiens but in french they don't have the s at the end." Oh boy, he could talk a lot. Will didn't mind. "Why is it homo-sapien?" Asked Will, wanting to know more and talk a bit with him. 

 

"Oh, well, they decided to name me that way be-" He started, before they both heard someone shouting, "Barman! Can I get a caipirinha?" Will gently smiled to Mike, and started working again, without knowing the end of the story. He wanted to, but all the evening there was so many clients, not giving him time. 

 

He found some time, when it was two, to make a "barman's favorite". It was his own invention, as he liked playing with liquors and food to make cocktails - his coworked decided of the name, and they both decided that this was a creation that no one could ever order, and that the only way to get it was that one of them should want to offer it. It was a mix of amaretto, the alcohol inside tiramisu, hibiscus soda, and inside you had to put a red lollipop. It tasted like candy, and you couldn't take more than one since it was horribly sweet, but it looked very nice with a transparent pink color.

 

He decided that Mike was getting one. He liked Mike - he could call it a first sight crush, but he liked him. He gave it and the four students were watching as he brought it. 

 

"Someone asked me to give you this drink." Lied Will. Mike looked at the barman, the drink, then Will again, and couldn't stop smiling. "Who?" he asked. 

 

"The person wants to remain anonymous." Said Will.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you liked it! Please tell me if you did, comments are so welcome! 
> 
> And if you want to send a prompt or talk, here is my tumblr: @whues


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